Forum

This month's COTM over on Chowhound is a book with many recipes for spice blends/pastes/sauces/condiments, which are then called for throughout the book. Unfortunately the index in the book does not list the recipes in which these blends are used along with the entry for the spice blend itself. My solution was to come to EYB, and do a search within the book, thinking I'd get every recipe where it was used as an ingredient. But what I found was that it wasn't listed as an ingredient or subrecipe. Instead, all the ingredients in the subrecipe were listed as ingredients in the main recipe. For example, in The Soul of a New Cuisine (the COTM), there is a recipe for green curry paste, which is later called for in a recipe for curried trout with coconut-chili sauce (with an option for using a Thai curry paste, I presume store-bought). Looking at the trout recipe, the green curry paste does not appear, so it does not show up on a search if I use curry paste as my keywords. Instead, all the ingredients for the curry paste are listed in the trout recipe.

Is that standard EYB practice regarding sub-recipes? I find it to be unhelpful, because looking at the trout recipe, I see a huge list of ingredients, when all I really need is something that I might already have made up in the fridge. Also, once one has made one of these spice blends, it would be very useful to have a way to search on it and find out which recipes in the book make use of it.

MelMM - this book was indexed back in the early days of EYB (in fact before we had even launched the website) so I'm afraid the indexing standards were not quite as stringent as they are now.  We will get one of our professional indexers to go through this book and make corrections.

The indexing rule with subrecipes is to index them as separate when they stand alone as well, and are used as parts of other recipes.  The problem with indexing the recipes that contain the spice mix/paste is that we have to assume that the person looking at the recipe has not already made the paste/spice mix that is part of the recipes, so we list all the ingredients.  The best advice is to check in the book for which parts of the recipe you need before going shopping.

As for listing all the uses for the spice mixes and pastes in the book, it isn't something we have done but could add, though it isn't a priority (if any member would like to volunteer, please step up!).  I did try doing this myself for 660 Curries but I had to stop as it was taking so long and I had much more urgent priorities. 

Jane  :: As for listing all the uses for the spice mixes and pastes in the book, it isn't something we have done but could add, though it isn't a priority (if any member would like to volunteer, please step up!).  I did try doing this myself for 660 Curries  ::

How/where would these be listed?  As 'Accompaniments', or in an EYB note, or...?

I'd be happy to do this for Sonia Uvezian's Recipes and Remembrances of an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen, which I indexed. It repeatedly uses several spice blends that are also given as recipes on their own, and like MelMM, I can see the value of being able to identify recipes to use up a batch once made up.  Just need to know what the desired format for listing them would be.

ellabee - that was part of the problem - not really having a place for the uses of spice mixes and pastes.  They aren't Accompaniments as they are part of the dish.  So what I did was add an EYB Comment listing all the recipes that used the spice mix.  Being an EYB Comment means it doesn't come up in the Notes listing for the book - I didn't want the Notes to be drowned in long lists of recipes.  And since you only need to look at the recipe for the spice blend you want to use up, there didn't seem any point in having all lists for the book listed on the book page.

Some of the lists for 660 Curries were very long (and as I said, I was never able to finish the book).  For example Punjabi-style warming spice blend.  So not an ideal solution, but for now it works. Let us know when you want Recipes and Remembrances... assigned to you for proofreading so you can add the recipe lists.

And if anyone wants to add the spice-blend-using recipes for Soul of a New Cuisine or finish off 660 Curries, also let us know.

It seems to me that it would be far simpler if the spice blend could just be listed by its name in the ingredient list of each recipe where it is used, and if that ingredient would also appear as a link to the recipe for the spice blend. So for example, in The Soul of a New Cuisine, "berbere" would appear as an ingredient for the rack of lamb, and for the doro wett, and in each case would appear as a link. That way, any user could easily see that it is a sub-recipe, and click on it to see the additional ingredients listed. It would solve the problem of finding more recipes that use the spice blend, because now the search feature would work and one could just search within the book for that "ingredient". Plus, it would make indexing easier, as all those ingredients would not need to be typed out multiple times. 

Having that long list of ingredients for the spice blend listed in the main recipe is really not as helpful as it would be to have the spice blend shown by name with a link to its ingredients. The reason is that I may not recognize all those ingredients as being berbere, or whatever the blend in question is, and shy away from making the recipe because I already used up the last of my cardamom making berbere for the lamb! 

A ingredient that is a sub-recipe shown as a link would solve that problem, and also be very intuitive for users who do not have the blend already made up. A link would be pretty obvious as indicating something you need to click on for more information.

I am finding the lack of "subrecipes" linking to one another very frustrating. The Soul is a very good example of this problem, but it occurs in many Indian, South American, Jamaican, and now African recipes.

In the Soul I searched for habaneros, and was directed to a single spice blend. MelMM kindly posted a list of recipes that used that spice blend, but those recipes indicated that the pepper used was a jalepeno. Obviously, not the same pepper at all, so the search capabilities didn't actually find all the references to this pepper.

I would LOVE to have any spice blend that is in a book refer to the recipes that use it, by listing the spice blend with the same name as an ingredient in the recipe that uses it. And the spice blend recipe should have a componenet of: list. You would be building a better index than the editors ever did!

I love EatYourBooks and would love to see it become even more searchable in meaningful ways.

Thanks!